Where do you order the pellets?

[FEDforum]

A question from Mathias Schmidt:

Where do you order the pellets from and are there different versions (caloric content, composition, etc)? Are you generally supplying the animals with additional food or are you keeping the pellets as only possible food source?

[Lex Kravitz]

We use 20mg 5TUM grain pellets for food intake monitoring:

http://www.testdiet.com/Diet-Enrichment-Products/Lab-Treat-Tablets-and-Pellets/index.html 

We also use sucrose pellets and flavored sucrose pellets from the same source.  The pellets must be 20mg, the 45mg pellets won't fit in the pellet disc.  

For sucrose operant training, we've left regular food in the cage as they'll still learn to nosepoke for sucrose with regular food around.  Usually they pick this up in one night if you leave the FED on in their cage overnight.  See a log about this here.  

The grain pellets are a complete food source so they can be used without additional food around, but make sure to check the FED for operation every day if FED is their only food source, because if FED jams the mouse will not have any food.  Jamming is still the main challenge I'm trying to overcome in the design.  In our hands, FED works super well for 1-2 days, but for longer experiments we experience jams and need to clean and test the FEDs every day.  We have done some ~2-week experiments with FED, but we check/clean the FEDs daily to minimize jams.  Minor point: the sucrose pellets make less dust than the grain pellets, and cause fewer jams.

[Dan Brierley]

To follow up on this, I've been using the F-0071 'dustless' (not dustless) precision pellets from Bio-Serv  (http://www.bio-serv.com/Rodent_DPPS/DPP_RP.html) for food intake studies with FED 1 for >1yr now, exclusively in 24/7 intake studies (no other food source) lasting several weeks at a minimum. 

When initially training mice I put FEDs in cage with couple of pellets sprinkled in cage nearby, and normal chow also available and measure intake of pellets and chow daily. Typically within 24-48 hours all mice will be exclusively eating from FEDs, at which point I remove normal chow. 

I also concur daily checking is an absolute must when doing this kind of experiment - I'll give FEDs a tap and quickly clean out pellet chute / well with moist cotton swab every day, and give a more thorough clean every 2nd or 3rd day when changing battery/uploading data.   

I'd be very interested to know if anyone has used both the Bio-Serv F-0071 and TestDiet 5TUL pellets in their FEDs, and noticed any differences in terms of dust/blocking etc?

Bio-Serv also make a 45% kcal HFD pellet in 20mg format as a custom order (F-06245) which I have not yet tried as they are £470 / kg (minimum 3kg order) for UK supply - has anyone else tried these (or another HFD pellet) in FEDs? 

[Lex Kravitz]

Thanks Dan,

I wasn't aware of those high fat pellets!   I might be tempted to try them out, it would be very useful to our research to be able to dispense HFD.  Do you know if they're oily or crumbly?  I would worry that a soft consistency would jam up in FED.  

We've also noticed that some specific FEDs jam much less than others.  We have some devices that can make it through a 2 week experiment with zero jams, and others that seem determined to jam every day.  I think the main source of variance in jamming is the 3D printing, and in particular the pellet disk.  If the disk is rough or is printed poorly it increases the potential for jams.  So when I identify a FED that's jamming I'll often throw out the pellet disk and use a newly printed one. We've just ordered a nicer 3D printer for the lab, so hopefully I'll be able to get more consistent prints with this and test this theory.  

[Kristen Delevich]

Hi FEDHeads,

Circling back to this post, I was wondering if anyone has tested the Bio-Serve 20 mg HFD pellets with the FEDs?

Cheers,

Kristen

[Lex Kravitz]

Hi Kristen!  Yes Bio-Serve pellets work fine in FED3!  We find that Bio-Serv typically has shorter lead times for shipping pellets than Test Diet too.  Best, -Lex

[Lex]

Also I just realized you asked about Bio-serv HFD pellets, yes we used those as well in FED3, they work!

They are only 29% fat and mice did not become obese on them but that's a different issue, they dispense just fine!

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[Koen van Wijk]

Hey Fedders, 

I thought I'd ask here because this is the closest I saw anyone discussing chowder types etc. 
I just had a company make an estimate of how much the Bioserv F0071 costs and they basically said around $700. 
I think this is quite expensive, I remember ordering custom made powder chow, which costed less than half of that. 
I checked the website and it says: F007120 mg, 50,000/Box $86.90.
Am I crazy or is this company asking me to pay 10x more than that Bioserv is asking for. 
Anyways I am at a loss, this company said they knew no other vendors that are selling Bioserv pellets (I live in Japan btw). 
Anyone have some tips? help? thanks in advance. 

-Koen 

2023年4月4日火曜日 3:58:09 UTC+9 lex.k...@gmail.com: